Top Social Media Marketing Predictions 2016

How would be the social media marketing strategies in 2016? Let’s discuss in this post!

2015 was an exciting year for the digital marketers. Not only the big firms, but the social media has been adopted by most of the businesses in the world to get exposure and reach the target audience.

Yes, social networks have turned into a great content and brand engagement medium.

Besides, Social media is important for the job searchers and thus, the social profiles where the online marketers have shown their skills would never be underestimated. Also, the online job opportunities related to the social media field are getting enlarged when compared to previous years.

So, how social media will influence the marketers in 2016?

The passing year has laid the foundations to many new social media trends, which would affect the social media marketing scene in 2016 as well.

Before checking the top social media predictions 2016, let’s have a quick review of some of the game-changing social media news in 2015.

This massive rise in the use of social media nudges us to have a successful social media plans for 2016. Am I right?

If you’re a brand marketer like me, I would suggest you take note of the following social media predictions to create a winning social media marketing strategies and build an impressive brand name for your business.

Peak 7 Social Media Evaluations of 2016

I’ve estimated that the following social media marketing plans would trend in the year 2016!

1. More Personalized Marketing

I believe that the personalization would be a perfect social media approach this year and so on, since the customers/social followers like the personalized offers from brands.

With the successful launch of broadcasting services like Periscope, Facebook live, Blab, you name it, marketers and influencers now have an opportunity to reach out to the fans and connect with them, when and as is.

So, you may find the creative, unique ways to approach and engage your fans with interesting content. Big Brands will hire influencers to advocate their products, live on social media.

For bloggers, the personalized marketing would be a tremendous opportunity to form a community around their blog, reaching and sharing values over live videos.

If you utilize the apps that support live streaming and real-time updates, then you will be able to leverage the insights of your customers/site visitors to create the tailored content for them.

2. Noticeable Visual Content

Understandable visual content will continue to take the front seat and help you get more engagement on social media.

Moreover, the marketing rules have changed, and thus, your spectators now got the opportunity to discover the helpful content through visual social media platforms.

Out of all, considering the short attention span of online readers, visual marketing in 2016 will be the key source to garner eyeballs on your content.

Having the customized visual content in the form of imagery, infographic, memes and gifs will change the way you refer visitors to your blog/business website.

So, conveying your brand message through the stand-out visual content would entertain your target audience in a better way, and they will start to follow your business that would lead to higher conversion rate.

3. Brace Social Video Era

With all the social media platforms, prioritizing video content, I am pretty sure that the videos will continue to boost the user engagement and social media shares in 2016.

Facebook is leading in adopting videos as a viable social media strategy. It has started to surpass the YouTube with its record video views.

Twitter has also followed suit with the announcement of supporting native videos. It is soon going to launch video ads for marketers too.

According to research by Cisco, video content will account up to 80 percent of all consumer Internet traffic (from 64% in 2014). It is proof of how we have to revamp our marketing strategies if we want to reach more readers and a wider audience.

Here is what the content marketing genius Jae Baer predicts about video marketing in 2016.Meeting your Facebook followers with a featured video, building a YouTube channel with curated videos and reaching your Instagram/Vine followers with short videos would help your brand get a good exposure.

If you’re a blogger, you may consider creating the videos using the screen recorder tools and embed useful videos in the social posts to improve the follower engagement on social media.

4. Scommerce – Social Media Online Shopping

Scommerce is the act of selling through social networks

I think that the Scommerce will likely to increase this year, 2016!

What is your deduction?

Marketers and brands will hail this feature no less than other trends in 2016. Customers can now buy a service or product directly from social media without having to leave the platform.

It further gives proof to my prediction about visual marketing. Since you have to entice customers directly from social media, you have to invest with better graphics and images that tell your brand story.

It again boils down to “having eye-catching visuals and imagery that resonates with your brand voice”.

Through the network-drive auctions, digital marketers can sell directly from social media without an online store.

Even the bloggers will have the nice opportunity to sell their affiliate or own products through social media.

5. Long Social Content

Since the things are getting changed, the social media has endured not only the short messages but also the extended social content.

Did you see the groundbreaking success of external publishing platforms like Medium and LinkedIn publishing in 2015? Then you’ll be thrilled to see how content publishing will go social in 2016.

I could estimate that the content publishing option on social media sites will change the game and yes, many brands show interest in integrating the Snapchat stories to reach out their base.

While these outlet content channels will be on the rise, I still raise the same question, are you prepared to rely your content on a platform you don’t own?

I’m not a fan of rented land, but having a good social presence with great content will keep your audience to stay where they want instead of turning them out to your native soil.

Do you agree with me?

6. Social Media Searches

Social media searches would be more powerful than before, and hence, I can predict that the social media optimization will be considered equally as the search engine optimization.

Facebook obviously has a great mine of data and with the release of its much-awaited search feature, it will become a full-fledged search engine driving traffic to your sites just like Google, Bing and others do.

Pinterest is also on its verge to becoming the next visual search engine and with the release of guided search it has done it rightfully so.

Just have a look at the below image to understand the guided search feature in Pinterest that may help you get visitors from Pinterest search engine.

Twitter is reportedly working on a ranking algorithm similar to EdgeRank of Facebook (called TweetRank) that would decide the priority of Tweets.

So, I would suggest you craft the quality social content with relevant keywords to drive traffic from social media search engine.

My Other Social Media Marketing Presumptions

Advertising – Social networks would enable flexible advertising functions for the online publishers.

Apps/Messengers – Brands would like to spend quality time on social media apps and messengers to connect with fans & customers.

Emojis – Emojis are the powerful communication tool to express the outlooks. Thus, they may be often used to enhance the click-through or conversion rates in social media.

Influencers connection – Marketers would keenly interested in connecting with social media influencers to drastically improve their brand visibility.

Social Media Mention – Businesses would like to receive great social media mentions and use some tracking tools to find out their brand mentions.

Privacy Concerns In Social Media

Where there is freedom, there comes a concern too. With so many ways to connect with your audience, you will also be giving your competitors an edge to keep a tab on you.

Not only can competitors spy you, increased social media connections can attract the wrong kind of audience as well and hence the privacy concerns have also become primary.

Avoiding creepy targeted ads with intrusive advertising would be good to stay authoritative in the eyes of your social media followers.

I imagine that the social networks will have better security features to prevent the phishing attacks and identity thefts.

Facebook has introduced some privacy features and hoping the same kind of awareness tools from other well-known social media websites as well.

Final Words

Last year, 2015 was a great year for social media and this year, 2016 is predicted to be even better with excellent marketing strategies that I’ve discussed above.

Just using the social media would not let you stand out from the crowd and thus, I would advise you to find and implement the personalized social media marketing techniques.

Don’t get overwhelmed with these social media predictions for this new year, 2016. Just you should be aware of these estimations to create even more, effective social media strategies that get you better results.

My personal pick would be to create more personalized content that gets shared on social media. You can consider getting a community of raving fans through live broadcasting.

Don’t forget to create social media content that aligns your SEO efforts and plan to use paid social media (if you have a budget) for deeper reach.

What do you predict about the social media behavior in twenty sixteen? Do you have anything to add to the social forecast list 2016? Is there anything I’ve missed in social media marketing plan 2016? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

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About The Author

Nirmala is a devoted blogger who likes to write about technology, social media and blogging. She leads a simple life and would like to help people through her writing skills. You may connect with her on Google Plus

33 Comments

Hi Nirmala, It’s a good post to read. The Facebook’s videos that automatically runs without even clicking has made the difference. And your tips about social media are really good and worth using. Keep up the Good work.

Yes indeed, last year was different and this year we hope to make better than the last, especially where social media is concerned, because have a strong social presence surely helps, isn’t it? However, it’s tough to be present on all platforms, but being on the main ones and tapping them once or twice a day is good I feel.

I agree with the things you mentioned, especially sharing the apt sizes of the images, depending on the platform, something that I’m working on nowadays. Yes, nothing works better than being yourself on such platforms, as that is being the real you.

Hi Nirmala maam, This is a truly good predictions. A prediction that stands on the foundation of today’s happenings is always a true one. I agree with you on the perfect image sizes. Nothing pains my nerves than seeing people using portrait pictures as cover images on Facebook. And when you view that on PC all you see is a bit of shirt and pant and in between their leather belt . LOL

SEO will surely face a competition from SMO for sure. I am already see people using visual cotnent and videos as a viable source of social conversions.

I am so happy you put this up, this is going to help me and so many others in the online business!

Social Media is a trending medium for the brand marketers and thus it would be good to recognize the future trends. I have just shared my assumptions, thanks for reading the post. Stay tuned Shrinivas!

Thanks for sharing useful tips for social media content. And your tips about social media are really good and worth using.This will surely help to get authors to have update information about digital marketing Thanks you. Have a nice day ahead. 🙂

Thank you for your informative article, I think social media marketing is something that can bring an enormous amount of traffic in a short span of time. Keep posting, Wishing you a happy blogging year..

Hello Nirmala, Great article and it is truly a way forward on social media 2016. As you said, having customized visual content in the form of imagery, infographic, memes and gifs will change the way visitors to our website and blog business. Good prediction and keep it up.

One thing I can say it is the best article to introspect 2015 and predict 2016, video marketing is going to rule the in marketing especially for influencers, Periscope initiated this change then Facebook live slowly getting its market with super video quality compared to the periscope.

Social search, long content, social commerce is going t raise this 2016, thanks for sharing information, see you soon.

Hi, Very informative post! The way you write and explained about social media are really good and worthful. It will surely helpful for all new bloggers and it bundled with all update information of digital marketing and social media. Social media marketing bring some huge amount of traffic in a short time period. At this time, it is a very important to post too.

Hello Nirmla Mam , The overall predictions say that people have lesser time and same and even risen hunger for more info and more solutions. That is why they want more and more in lesser time. Thanks for Sharing Information ..

The recent social media trend is sending whatsapp messages. I am using it to build relationship with their target group. But before sending product or service related messages, first I send good morning and good night messages to initiate a friendly relation.